Note: This article applies to GNOME 3.10 in Fedora 20. You no longer need these steps in GNOME 3.14 in Fedora 21.

I’m setting up an Alfresco server and I need to test some of the tweaks and configuration I’m working with. Alfresco is big; lots of components including Java, an application server, usually a front end server, a database, etc., etc. In addition, it is certified to work with a narrow set of other software. For example, Alfresco certifies against Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, but my development machine is Fedora 19. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 comes with MySQL, but Alfresco certifies against a much more recent version.

This is the perfect use-case for an Virtual Machine.

So I started virt-manager to get started. I configured a VM, but … failed. It seems that virt-manager wants to place the image for the virtual machine under /var/lib/libvirt/images. However the /var tree on my laptop is fairly small. I don’t have the space to install a whole other OS there. My home directory, on the other hand, has plenty of space.

You may not have bridging set up. Check /etc/qemu/bridge.conf to see that it contains the line:

allow virbr0

If you want to run or configure your Boxes VM in virt-manager, you need to connect to the user session, which isn’t possible via the user interface yet. Run:

$ virt-manager -c qemu+unix:///session

If this isn’t working for you, you can request assistance on IRC at: #boxes on GimpNet. If you do not have an IRC client, you can use this web page.

Will this get easier in the future? Absolutely. You can read the discussion and follow the progress on GNOME Bugzilla.

Edits on Nov 27, 2013: Virt Manager and Boxes do NOT need to be shut down while editing the VM details. There is a virsh command to get a list of VM names. Your network interface may not match mine if you are not running Fedora. Add link to the #boxes channel on IRC. Add in troubleshooting section for users without bridged networking configured. You do NOT need to run the VM using virt-manager after this configuration change, Boxes will handle it fine. Add in the Bugzilla link. Thanks to teuf, zeenix, and elad on IRC for the corrections.

Edit on Jan 22, 2015:Fixes and improvements to Boxes for GNOME 3.14 make this article out of date — the changes mentioned here are now the default Boxes configuration.

Just a quick tip for people who use multiple user accounts at once on Fedora. (I test software using brand new user accounts sometimes, for example. I’ve heard of others may use multiple user accounts to try and sandbox applications they expect to misbehave. [I recommend a VM for this, FWIW.])

If you’ve ever switched users in Fedora and couldn’t get sound to work (su - testuser or ssh testuser@localhost) this tip is for you!

Well, as my last two posts implied, I own a TiVo again. In fact, I own a TiVoHD. Pay per view on the TiVo works through Amazon, so they have the best price. I’ve been playing with it for 2 days now and I have some thoughts, comments, and a small review.

The TiVoHD is a much different device from the Series 1 TiVo I received 7 years ago. The Series 1 was intended to be connected to your cable box as a pure DVR addition. The TiVoHD becomes your cable box and your Internet/TV media center. It’s hard to compare them since they are very different devices.

The Verizon FiOS cable box with DVR is a lot closer, and the TiVo is worse in some ways:

you don’t get On Demand or Verizon’s pay per view: This is working with Comcast now if you live in the Boston area. I shed no tears for pay per view, but On Demand had a lot of free content.

the TiVo interface is almost unacceptably slow: When you press a button on the remote, it takes anywhere from a half second to a full second for the device to register it. To make matters worse, with a Dolby receiver, the TiVo sometimes doesn’t make a confirmation sound. This problem makes the device feel cheap and hard to use. I’m amazed that they released it without solving this problem. Otherpeoplethinksotoo.

entering text using the remote (for searches) is much, much harder: Verizon had the ability to use the letter substitutions on the number keys to enter text. So 228 matched CAT and BAT, but searching was easier and faster.

the guide doesn’t show which shows will be recorded already: this didn’t work reliably on the Verizon DVR, but it was nice to look through the list of shows and see that The Daily Show was going to be recorded.

It’s better in a number of ways too: the channelguides are much much nicer; scheduling shows is easier and more understandable; fewer bugs; the TV picture seems better somehow (maybe a better MPEG decoder?); easier to use; expandable storage; ability to record shows to DVD or VCR; closed caption support; a better remote; swivel search; and Guru Guides which help you find interesting things to watch.

But the most interesting thing about the new TiVoHD happens when you give it a broadband connection. TiVo seems to be trying to make their device a full media center. You can listen to Internet radio stations, (on your stereo!) log into online photo sites and view them on your TV, purchase and play movies from Amazon, etc., etc. It will also allow you to download recorded shows and movies to your computer, (and then to your iPod, etc) stream photos and music from your computer, and transfer videos from your computer to your TiVo.

So, what’s going on? Is TiVo too hard to obtain now? Is there not enough of an audience? Are the hackers all using the open source equivalents? Is it too hard to install and use third-party software? Or is this just a community management or advertising problem? Or am I missing a vibrant community of people? Does it cost too much for developers? (The monthly price seems to be much cheaper than renting the Verizon box…)

That said, I have a Google Calendar that I want to view in Evolution (if just for the nice reminders) but I don’t want to make public, and I can’t use the private URL. I need Evolution to authenticate to Google, and download the calendar. If you can use a private URL, there is already a good solution.

To that end, I made a terrible, horrible, no good patch to allow Evolution to authenticate to Google so I can download my calendar. The trick is to pre-auth with Google, get the auth token from the result, and store it in GConf. From there, the patch will make evolution-data-server recognize Google Calendar URLs and send the auth token in a special header.

Before I get to the patch, here are the problems:

Seriously, it’s an ugly patch

You have to recompile evolution-data-server

Adding an auth token to GConf?! What are you, nuts?

Evolution may not be able to understand the appointments set by Google’s calendar

as a web calendar. You’ll need to replace username with your email username and domain with your email domain, usually gmail.com. You’ll need to check “Use Secure Connection” and I recommend that you cache the calendar locally.

It’s easy to create an automated staging server for content that doesn’t need to be compiled (like most web content.) The trick is that CVS has a very flexible logging system. All you need to do is have your CVS server send an email on each check in and have the staging server take that email and check out the files that changed.

Back when I worked for Ximian a common complaint we heard was that Evolution wasn’t good for sending formatted text because it always word wrapped it causing lots of errors. This was pretty frustrating because it wasn’t true, but since we heard it all the time, it was obviously too confusing. Here’s the dialog. Can you guess how to preformat text from this screenshot?

If you guessed that you click on the dropdown that says: “Normal” and select “Preformat,” you’re right!

Most people seem to assume that the second toolbar doesn’t do anything when you’re not write an HTML mail. But that’s not true.

I recently filed this bug report against the Evolution composer. The problem is that the composer is too confusing to use. Here is the composer editing an HTML message:

I propose that the main toolbar lose the “insert” capabilities that only work in HTML mode and gain a toggle button which switches between HTML and plain text mode. When the button is pressed in, you’re sending an HTML message.The secondary toolbar should only contain the controls that are currently active. So text color, font size, font decoration, and font style will not be shown in text mode. And instead of “normal” the default mode should be named for what it actually does: “Word Wrap.” Something like this:

For more than a year now, I’ve had a small High Definition Television, but for many reasons (okay mostly cheapness) only been able to use it to display standard cable. Well, that changed a few days ago when VerizonFiOSTV became available in my area. We got it just before the rate hike in our area.

This service is really amazing. The free installation is intense and lasted all day because they seem very concerned that everything work perfectly when they leave. The technician stayed until the network service was exactly as fast as what I’d paid for, and the television was playing HDTV and standard TV perfectly. All the cables were free. All the equiptment except for the cable box rental is free. Very very impressive.

The picture quality on the television is amazing. Standard TV looks better than DVDs. HDTV looks so good it almost doesn’t matter what you’re watching. And the 5.1 channel audio is great.

Oh. And this is all cheaper than what I was paying RCN without HDTV.

So far, the only problem I’ve seen is two 1 second audio drop outs during the Super Bowl.